The News Sentinel reports that technicians from Hart InterCivic "should arrive in town this afternoon" and that Knox County election officials are "optimistic votes from a malfunctioning voting machine* will be retrieved and counted to decide whether deputies will receive a new pension plan."

Read more with updates after the jump...

(*Actually, I believe it is a "master" machine/server that records the votes from all the other machines attached to it. But I could be mistaken. UPDATE: After reading more at WATE -- see update below -- it does not appear this is a "master" machine.)

Election officials say that if data retrieval from the corrupted memory card is not successful they "will be able to print out a paper trail so workers can tabulate votes by hand."

The question is, why haven't they done this already?

When election officials say they are "optimistic" that "votes from a malfunctioning voting machine will be retrieved," perhaps it's time to get the Rush Holt Voter Confidence Act out of committee and on to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives for a vote.

A few hundred million more in "helping America vote" money for local election commissions would go a long way towards restoring voter confidence in our elections.

UPDATE: And another thing. The KNS quotes the Knox County Election Commission as saying "The only race that could be affected mathematically is the county charter amendment that, if it passes, would provide a defined-benefit pension to sworn law enforcement officers in the Knox County Sheriff’s Office." (CORRECTION: Knox County Elections Administrator Greg Mackay says that the quote cited above was the KNS, not the Election Commmission. He only said how many votes were stranded, not what races were affected. The "affected mathematically" statement is from the paper.)

First of all, have we has the KNS lowered the bar to the point that we they are only concerned about counting votes that are "mathematically" significant to one particular race or another?

Second of all, the margin of victory in the Pettigrew (D) v. Campfield (R) for Tennessee House District 18 is 1970 votes for Campfield, who has already been declared the winner. There are 2650 votes missing at Downtown West. That's over there in Schree's district. There could be plenty of votes for Schree stranded in that machine. Are there 1971 votes? Who knows? We don't. The Knox County Election Commission doesn't. (C.E. Petro was already all over this last night.)

The Election Commission suggests that if the votes cant' be retrieved from the defective memory card they can print them out. Why weren't they printed as the voting was taking place? Why haven't they been printed and counted already? How can they retrieve them by way of printing if they can't retrieve them by electronic means or by means of extraordinary intervention by the voting machine manufacturer?

If the votes cannot be retrieved, can the election be certified or will the entire election have to be voided? These are early voting votes, so there are votes from multiple precincts. A single precinct do-over would not seem possible. This is a much bigger deal than is being reported in the media. Stay tuned. And pay close attention to what you are told by the local media about how it is resolved.

UPDATE: Just to be clear, responsibility for this lies with the voting system manufacturer, not the Knox County Election Commission. We are certain the KCEC is just as anxious as everyone else to get it fixed, and we are certain they will review the backup and audit printing capabilities going forward.

UPDATE: Apparently they are not able to print the audit tape either. According to WATE:

Knox County Election Commission Chair Pamela Reeves explains what happened to the machine. "Apparently, what it did was it smoked. I don't know what caused it to smoke, but it was literally smoking. So they unhooked it at the time. Of course, we don't read the votes and we didn't know there was a problem until we went to read the votes Tuesday night."

Election Administrator Greg Mackay explains, "The machine won't print the hard copy right now so they have several options. They can either read the chips and repair the data card or if they get the machine to print the hard copy, then we can just type in the numbers."

This is confusing in a couple of ways. What good is a paper tape if it has to read from the same storage as the electronic voting? Seems like the idea would be to print the votes as the voting happens, so even if the machine gets "smoked" you have a paper trail.

Second, it does not sound like this is a "master" machine after all. Otherwise they wouldn't have been able to just unhook it. If I'm not mistaken, the individual machines do not have a paper audit trail, and the paper audit trail prints from the master machine. So this is why they aren't able to print the votes. Which again raises the question why aren't they printed on the master machine as voting takes place. This appears to be a poor system architecture design.

UPDATE: From the Hart InterCivic website, here are the components that are apparently involved:

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Mobile Ballot BoxTM (MBB)

The MBB is eSlate's reusable, portable, flash memory PC card. Used to store election information, the MBB is the link among all components of the eSlate System. Each MBB is uniquely serialized for each election and tracked by the Ballot Origination Software System (BOSS) and Tally applications. When inserted into the Judge's Booth Controller, the MBB supplies election information and ballot styles at the polling place and stores the cast votes. Because the MBB uses solid-state, non-volatile memory storage, no batteries or constant power supplies are required to maintain data.

Judge's Booth ControllerTM (JBC)

The JBC manages the election process in each precinct; enables the election official to know which booths are in use at any given time; issues access codes for voting; and presents each voter with the appropriate ballot style. The JBC can control up to 12 eSlate units and is lightweight, portable, and easy to store and use.

eSlate®

eSlate is the device that voters use to cast their ballots. Lightweight, easy to use, secure and accessible, eSlate is about the size of a legal pad. Ballots are presented to the voter on a durable color screen. Selections are made by using an integrated rotary optical encoder. This unique design innovation differentiates eSlate from other electronic voting systems on the market, offering increased accuracy, reliability and ruggedness.

Unsurpassed Security

Each vote cast on an eSlate voting unit is recorded instantaneously in three independent, physically separate locations, ensuring cast vote data will be secure in the unlikely event of a machine failure. No smart cards or other programmable activation devices are required. Officials do not have to monitor specialized devices that might malfunction, create a security hazard or be accidentally carried away by voters.

DESIGNED FOR FAILSAFE OPERATION

All information managed by the voting equipment is saved in three physically separate devices, providing back-up and redundant data storage in the event any one of the components malfunctions. This is a significant advantage over stand-alone systems that may lose cast votes as a result of a malfunction. Automatic creation of triplicate original cast vote records
throughout the course of the day eliminates need to collect votes from each machine upon poll closing, eliminating a potential source of error. The eSlate equipment has 18-hours of battery backup to protect against power failures and lost data. All information storage devices are solid-state, and thus are not susceptible to magnetic fields, abusive handling or loss of power.
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Something doesn't make sense. It would be nice if someone would explain how it actually works, so we could better understand the problem. What and where are the three independent, physically separate locations and why can't the votes be retrieved from at least one of them? Where is the audit printer? When does it print? Etc.

UPDATE: The votes were retrieved and counted. Here's the WATE report.

According to the article, technicians from Hart had to remove some memory chips from a damaged motherboard and install them on another motherboard to retrieve the votes. The article also says something about "rebuilding" the memory chips. I have no idea what this could possibly mean.

It would be nice if someone from the KCEC could get an accurate explanation from Hart technicians about what they did, how the redundancy works, why the votes aren't transmitted to the controller in real time, why they aren't printed on the audit tape in real time, and why they have a system architecture designed such that a failing motherboard (or a failing component on a motherboard) requires technicians from out of state to come in, take the machine to a lab, and do major surgery to retrieve votes from these "backups".

No business that I have ever been involved with or their auditors would accept such a "backup" architecture.